The Truth About Lorin Jones

by Alison Lurie

  “No,” Polly agreed.

  “But now everybody wants a Lorin Jones; they’re worth twenty, twenty-five thousand, and rising fast. It’s a whole different kettle of fish. If you own one you’ve got to think about insurance, burglar alarms, restorers, the lot. You sell it, you can buy a year’s worth of dope, a sports car, a trip to Spain, whatever an individual of Cameron’s type wants.”

  “You think Cameron might have some pictures he’d like to sell now?”

  “It’s a possibility. Of course it’d be rather a dilemma for him. Legally he doesn’t own anything of Lorin’s, because they were never married and she died without a will. Everything belongs to Lennie. So if Cameron wanted to sell anything he’d have to do it under the table.”

  “That wouldn’t be so easy,” Polly protested. Most collectors she knew of bought art partly for the pleasure of showing it off, and partly as an investment. They hated a dubious title: it meant lying to people who came to the house; and could be really embarrassing if they decided to sell the painting later or give it to a museum for a tax write-off. The first question then would certainly be, What was the provenance?

  “No. If Cameron means to sell he’s got to find someone who wants a cut-rate Jones and is willing to keep it permanently under wraps. And I don’t think he — or anyone, probably — could do that. For that kind of deal you have to have a really important work on offer — a Johns or a Rothko or something of the sort. But that’s where you might have an advantage.”

  “Me?” Polly frowned; her headache felt worse.

  “You, darling.” Jacky yawned. “I couldn’t approach Cameron, because I’m known to be a reputable dealer. But you could hint to him that you might be interested in buying a Lorin Jones, if he happened to have one lying around.”

  “No thanks.” Polly spoke with force and ill-suppressed indignation. “I’m not interested in getting mixed up in that kind of deal. Anyhow, I haven’t got the money.”

  “Of course not,” Jacky said smoothly; he leaned over and patted her arm. “But it would be a good way of finding out if Cameron does have anything, wouldn’t it?” He smiled fishily. “And maybe getting it back.”

  “Well, yeah, but I don’t know —”

  “You see, if you found one of Lorin’s paintings in Cameron’s possession, Lennie and I could go to my lawyer, and find out what could be done. Possibly just threatening him with a lawsuit would be enough.”

  “Suppose it wasn’t?”

  “Well, we could actually sue. And then there’s always the police. I imagine he wouldn’t want that.” Jacky giggled. “Anyhow, if you should run into anything, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know as soon as possible. You can phone the gallery collect any time. Leave a message on the machine if I’m not there. ... Oh, Doris, darling! Marvelous to see you. Looking so very very well!”

  Jacky rose to his feet and kissed the smoky air beside the cheek of one of Polly’s former colleagues. She excused herself from their conversation as soon as possible and went into the telephone booth, now fortunately empty.

  To give verisimilitude to her excuse, she lifted the receiver and called her own number. The blurred but unpleasant underwater buzz of the dial tone filled her ear, and then an empty ringing; Jeanne and Betsy, she knew, were out. As she listened she gazed through the greeny-brown tinted glass, picking out Jacky and her other acquaintances among the swarming, swimming crowd in the gallery. It looked even worse to her now; a tank of lies, deals, subterfuges, and deceits; of slippery aquatic creatures, of things drowned and rotting.

  She stared at the strips and shapes of brilliant color floating above the crowd; works of talent, even perhaps of genius. What were they doing here, sunk halfway into this slimy aquarium? she thought. And what was she doing here?

  But then, that’s what Lorin Jones must have asked herself. The New York art world Polly saw now was the one Lorin must have seen: a vision of an underwater hell that drove her first to Wellfleet and then even farther, to Key West. Leaving a trail that Polly must, whatever she felt about it, follow.

  The apartment was empty when Polly got back. On the kitchen counter was a note from Jeanne suggesting that she join them at a dish-to-pass Affirmative Action benefit in the Village, and instructions on warming up the supper she’d left in case Polly didn’t feel up to another party.

  Wearily, gratefully, she turned on the oven and began to open her mail, which consisted entirely of bills and circulars. There was also a large, badly wrapped parcel for Stevie, sent by her father from San Diego; HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM GRANDDAD was scrawled in red felt-tipped marker above the address, and HANDLE WITH GREAT CARE PLEASE, FRIENDS below it. In spite of this appeal, or maybe because of it, the package had come apart at one end, exposing part of an inner wrapping paper printed with pink and yellow teddy bears.

  Polly scowled as she looked at it, then sighed. This parcel was in every way typical of Carl Alter. The soiled and refolded brown paper, the coarse hairy tightly knotted string, the incongruous inner wrapping, the appeal to the kindness of strangers, the public expression of private sentiments; and most of all the fact that it was five weeks late. When she was a child, her father’s gifts always arrived after the occasion or never, and it was the same now with his grandson.

  And what the hell was she going to do with the thing? It was too late to mail it to Denver; it would have to wait till Stevie got home. And meanwhile she would have to write her father and explain what had happened. Or maybe it would be quicker to call; she hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of months anyhow. Not that they ever had much to say to each other. Polly didn’t care what articles he had published lately in California Living and the local newspaper or how his high blood pressure and his current wife’s orchids were doing; he didn’t care what was happening to her, he never had. But every few months they went through the motions.

  So, after she had eaten Jeanne’s veal-and-mushroom casserole (first-rate, as usual) and homemade noodles and green beans, and washed up, and made herself a cup of coffee, Polly dialed San Diego.

  “Yeah,” her father said after they had exchanged the usual superficial news. “I know when Stevie’s birthday is, sure I do.” (Uh-huh, Polly thought.) “I just wasn’t able to find the kind of binoculars I wanted to send him right away, see.”

  “Binoculars,” she repeated, thinking that considering the way the package looked they were probably broken; and then that as usual her father’s present was not only late but inappropriate. There was no use for binoculars in New York except to spy into neighbors’ windows, and she certainly didn’t want Stevie to start that. Yes, but in Colorado they’d be welcome, she remembered miserably. “I tell you what,” she said. “I’ll put on a new card, and give them to him at Christmas.”

  “Nah, nah,” Carl Alter objected. Polly could see him shaking his head once or twice fast, the way he did. “I don’t want Stevie to have to wait any longer. You give them to him now, okay?”

  “I can’t do that,” Polly said with irritation. “He’s in Denver now.”

  “In Denver? Oh, yeah. Right.”

  “He’s been there since September,” Polly said, positive that her father hadn’t bothered to listen to her before, or more likely hadn’t bothered to remember. She would have thought he was losing his memory, except that he’d always been like that.

  “Well. You must miss him.”

  “Very much,” Polly said crossly.

  “He’s coming home for Christmas, though, hum?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t know, he may go back to Colorado again for the spring term.”

  “Ah. Well, that’s too bad,” Carl Alter said without concern or emphasis. “But you can visit him, that’ll make it all right.”

  What a stupid, callous thing to say, Polly thought, feeling the familiar angry buzz in her chest. She should fly to Denver, stay in a motel, and have a couple of restaurant meals with Stevie, and that would make it “all right.”

  “That’s what you ought to do,” her father con
tinued. “Go to Colorado and visit him. Yep. You do that.”

  “Oh, is that so!” Polly cried, losing her temper. “Well, I’m surprised you should say that, considering you practically never visited me after I moved to Rochester.”

  There was a moment of silence on the cross-country phone line. “That was different,” Carl Alter said finally. “You never wanted to see me.”

  “I did, too,” Polly insisted; she was damned if she was going to let him get away with this.

  “Aw, come on. Back in Mamaroneck, whenever I came to take you out for the day, you used to have a tantrum. Your mother told me so. She practically had to force you to come with me.”

  “But that wasn’t — I didn’t —” Polly stuttered furiously, and fell silent, not trusting herself to speak without swearing.

  “Never mind, Polly-O. I understand how it was. But you and Stevie, that’s different. Right?”

  “I guess so,” Polly said flatly. Goddamn it, of course it was different. She loved Stevie; until this fall they hadn’t ever been separated. But what was the use of saying this to someone like Carl Alter? What was the use of shouting at him?

  “So if he’s in Denver, you go see him, okay?”

  “Okay,” Polly said flatly.

  “And I tell you what else you do. You find out what Stevie wants for Christmas, and I’ll send it to him.”

  “I don’t see the point of that,” Polly said, again fighting for control. “You won’t remember anyhow.”

  “I will so; I promise. What the hell —”

  “It’ll be the same as it was with me,” Polly cried furiously. “You were always promising! Two years running, you promised to buy me an Etch A Sketch.”

  “An Etch A Sketch?” Carl Alter repeated at the other end of the United States.

  “It was a kind of screen with dials, you could draw pictures with it, and I kept asking you — Oh, never mind,” she added, ashamed now of her outburst. “I’ll ask Stevie what he wants, but you know it’s probably too late for the Christmas mails already.”

  “I tell you what. Maybe I’ll send him a check, he can pick out something himself.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Polly said wearily, thinking that of course it would never happen; less angry now with her father — because what was the use? — than she was with herself for having blown up at him after all these years. “You do that,” she added.

  DANIELLE ZIMMERN KOTELCHUK,

  former sister-in-law of Lorin Jones

  Hey, Polly, before you start, I want to apologize for never getting down to New York. See, what happens is, I plan to go, every so often; but somehow I never make it. When you live on a farm, even a part-time one, there’s always just too much to do on weekends: there’s the garden, and the horses have to be fed and exercised, and the dog’s about to have puppies, it’s one damn thing after another. That’s one reason.

  I guess the other is, I’ve gotten to hate the place. And of course Bernie never liked it. But it’s weird, a city girl like me. Though I still love Paris: I go there every summer for a couple of weeks if I can. But I realized the other day, literally all I’ve seen of New York in nearly three years is Kennedy Airport.

  Okay, you want to hear about Laurie. I’ve been thinking what I could tell you that’d be useful. There ought to be something; I knew her for nearly twenty years. But I never felt I knew her all that well, or that we had much to say to each other.

  No, I don’t mean I didn’t like her. I liked her well enough, but she just wasn’t on my wavelength.

  Well, for example. I’m pretty much up front, always have been, and Laurie was the elusive, silent, secretive type. When I first met her, I thought she was a kind of Rima, a bird girl — did you ever read Green Mansions? Those immense eyes, and all that untidy dark hair. Her husband treated her that way, as if she were some fragile woodland creature, too delicate for this world.

  I don’t know. Probably she realized it was part of the deal, if you look like that.

  Well, you must have noticed that thin women attract a different kind of man than plump ones do. If you’re underweight you get older men, fatherly guys, who like to think of women as frail and helpless. They want to protect you and shield you from the world.

  Right. Whereas if you’re overweight you draw the opposite type. Whatever their age, what they basically are is little boys who want to be taken care of. If you’re really built like a house, guys like that take one look at you and cry “Mommy!”

  I think it’s harder to be too thin. Especially if you’re small, too; then you get the aggressive macho types, who like to refer to their wives as “the little woman.” And if you’re really unlucky you can attract the kind of man who’s looking for someone vulnerable, so he can hurt her or even destroy her.

  No. In my opinion, most of the time it’s not luck; it’s a choice. I tell my women’s studies students, what they’re doing when they order that double fudge sundae, or shove it away, is choosing the kind of man they want, the role they want to play in a relationship.

  Yeah, I think Laurie was doing that too, probably unconsciously. But Garrett certainly fit the pattern. He was always running after her with a sweater. And when the family got together, he was the one who did all the talking, and told us what a great artist she was going to be. Later on, when she began to get a reputation, he’d boast about her most recent success.

  I think she was very embarrassed by it. When Garrett started quoting her latest review, or telling us what important collector had just bought one of her paintings, she always looked kind of miserable to me.

  Oh, sure, I think she was very gifted. Nobody doubts that now, do they?

  Yes, when I was married to Lennie we had a couple of her paintings. But he took them when we split. I got the kids and the house and most of the furniture, it was a fair deal. Lennie was never mean, not about money anyhow.

  No, I don’t miss them that much. I prefer more content in art. I know it’s totally unfashionable, but what I really go for is nineteenth-century French realism: Courbet, Manet. Delacroix and Géricault even. Of course that’s my period. I like a lot of color and action.

  We didn’t see them all that often. Lennie’s father enjoyed having his family around on holidays, so he’d make an effort to get us all together. But he and Marcia were traveling abroad a lot of the time.

  Yes, we saw more of Laurie the first couple of years we were married, before her mother died. We used to stay at Lennie’s father’s house in White Plains whenever we came down to New York. Lennie didn’t get on too well with Dan, but he liked Celia, even though she was his stepmother. But she was less like a classic stepmother than anyone I ever met.

  She was a really nice woman. I didn’t pay any attention to her at first, she was so pale and dim and self-effacing. She looked a lot like Laurie, but she didn’t have her striking black-and-white coloring or her energy. When you walked into a room full of family, Laurie and Dan were the first people you noticed, and Celia was about the last.

  Well, Lennie’d told me she was awfully intelligent, and when I finally started to talk to her, I found out he was right. Celia’d read just about everything, even in my field. All of Proust and Colette and Camus, for instance, and mostly in French. Balzac, though she didn’t appreciate him. Gross, he seemed to her — “earthbound” was her term — and greedy, and too interested in money. But that’s la condition humaine, like he said, right?

  About all she ever did was read, and work in the garden a little. I never saw her cook or sew or clean or anything like that. Of course they had a live-in housekeeper, and Celia was already ill when I met her.

  You couldn’t tell, except that she always seemed tired.

  I think she knew she didn’t have much time left. She always used to ask me what’d been published in Paris lately that was interesting; and when I recommended something she’d call Scribner’s bookstore in New York and order it sent that day, first-class. I thought that was kind of silly and extravagant back th
en, but afterward I realized she’d been afraid she might miss something otherwise.

  The infuriating thing is, the kind of cancer she had is curable now, it has only about a ten percent fatality rate. If she’d been born twenty years later she’d probably be alive today, and maybe she’d have accomplished something too, because she had such a remarkable mind.

  I figure that Celia knew everything, really. Only she couldn’t do anything about it, at least it seemed like that to her.

  For instance, she saw that Lennie and I were going to have a rough ride together, but that we’d both survive it one way or the other. And I’m sure she knew Lennie’s father was sleeping with some woman from his office, who turned out to be Marcia. And she knew Dan couldn’t stand her being ill.

  He despised weakness, you see. Lennie inherited that from him. Except the kind of weakness Lennie despises isn’t so much physical or moral as intellectual. He can’t stand stupidity, even in kids, and you know all kids are stupid sometimes. I remember once his shouting at Roo, “Why must you be so childish?” But the thing was, she was a child, she was only about four then.

  Yes. I never thought about it before, but I think Laurie despised weakness, too.

  All kinds. But with her it was her own weakness as well as other people’s — probably more than other people’s.

  No. She had a lot more drive and will than her mother, but she didn’t have her father’s stamina. Celia said to me once, “I wish Laurie were a little bit more like you, a little tougher.”

  No, after Dan married Marcia we didn’t see them so much. We’d always go to New York for Thanksgiving, though, and Laurie and Garrett would usually be there.

  It wasn’t very comfortable. Lennie didn’t get on with his dad, like I said, and Laurie couldn’t stand Marcia.

  Well, she can be pretty hard to take, but she’s got a good heart. She still sends my kids presents on their birthdays, even though they’re grown up. Ridiculous presents, mostly. My youngest, who’s in the Peace Corps in Africa, got a five-pound box of Whitman’s Sampler chocolates from her last February, because she used to like them as a little kid. Of course it was congealed into a kind of chocolate soup by the time it arrived, but you have to appreciate the impulse.